Regional Blood Centre Quetta

Regional Blood Centre Quetta was inaugurated by the then
Health Minister Balochistan Mir Rahmat Saleh Baloch on March 8th,
2017. The Quetta Blood Center is one of the 10 RBCs developed by the German
government as part of the first phase of establishing of a nationwide network
of 10 modern blood centers and an up-grade of 60 existing hospital based blood
banks nationwide.

Balochistan is the largest province of Pakistan, covering 44%
of the country’s area (347,190 km2 ) with an estimated 17 million
inhabitants representing only 5% of the country’s population. Health care
services in Balochistan are provided by public and private providers but the
government is by far the main provider and curative services in most rural
areas. The DoH has recently formulated a vibrant and active Health Policy and
Health Sector Strategy with assistance of Technical Resource Facility (TRF).
In the public sector, health services are
provided through a tiered referral system of health care facilities; with
increasing levels of complexity and coverage from primary, to secondary and
tertiary health facilities. Primary care facilities include basic health units
(BHUs), rural health centres (RHCs), government rural dispensaries (GRDs),
mother and child health (MCH) centres and TB centres. There are 23 district
hospitals, 5 divisional hospitals and 5 tertiary care hospitals including Bolan
Medical Complex, Sandeman Provincial Hospital, Fatimah Jinnah Chest &
General Hospital, Helper’s Eye Hospital, and Sheikh Khalifah bin Zayed
Hospital.

The primary level health facilities in the province include
Civil Dispensary (567), Basic Health Unit (553), TB Clinic (22), MCH Centre
(89), Rural Health Centres (89), and Leprosy Centres (13). Total hospital beds
of the public sector are 3,415, i.e. 2,354 persons per bed. Healthcare service
delivery in the province is very challenging due to long distances, rugged
terrain, dispersed population, slow social progress, security situations, lack
of trained HR, scarce funds, etc. The MMR is 785/100,000 live births while the
national figures stands at 272/100,000 live births. The progress on MDGs and
SDGs has been disappointing in the province including the blood transfusion
services. A survey conducted by SBTP in 2016 identified more than 70 blood
banks in Quetta itself. Some blood donor services run by a few community based
NGOs exist. Most donations are collected from replacement donors, while the
proportion of voluntary donors is still extremely low. The budget of the
provincial PC-1 Phase I was PKR 297 million through which RBC Quetta was
constructed in the premises of Bolan Medical Complex, Quetta with a capacity of
processing at least 50,000 blood donations annually. The budget for Phase II of
the project is PKR 169 million. In Phase II, BBs in Turbat, Khuzdar, Sibi and
Loralai DHQ hospitals will be upgraded and two NGOs in Quetta will also be
supported.